All Herbert Postdoctoral Fellows participate in various ongoing projects or roles within the Herbert Writing Center; the goal is to develop administrative and project management experience that will benefit their professional development. Below are a few of the projects or roles in which Herbert Fellows have participated.

Writing consultant coaching and training

In small groups of new MA/MFA or undergraduate writing consultants, coaches play a year-long supportive role in our writing consultant training program, guiding new writing consultants to develop a thoughtful and informed writing consultation practice. The Fall coaching commitment is 2 hours per week of mixed synchronous and asynchronous work, while the Spring coaching commitment is 3 hours per week with the addition of occasional coach-led viewing sessions of recorded writing consultations. Benefits include collaborating on a small team of dedicated leaders, mentoring new graduate or undergraduate students, and gaining valuable writing program administration experience. Coaches may return as a trainer the following year, when they are invited to contribute more broadly to curriculum design and learning-module revision and lead training sessions independently.

Instructional technology development

The Assignment Planners project currently includes ten assignment types, ranging from Annotated Bibliographies and Literature Reviews to Podcasts, Presentations, and Research papers. Each assignment planner breaks down the assignment into manageable steps and attributes specific time frames that can be added to students’ calendars. Detailed instructions are also available for each step, including resources, links, and tips. The Assignment Planner tool helps students complete complex research and writing projects on time while teaching them how to break down large projects into manageable steps and directly access UTK’s many resources.

In addition, our PowerNotes and AI Writing Pilot explores the potential of this platform to (1) support increased critical engagement with essential course reading and (2) provide a writing environment that allows students to use AI tools in a transparent manner that assists their research and writing processes rather than replaces them.

Specifically, the pilot aims to develop students’ critical reading skills, build student and instructor awareness of the benefits and risks of using LLMs and generative AI in college-level writing,  describe how and how much students make use of AI-enabled tools while engaged in the process of completing reading, research, and/or writing activities; and assess the usefulness or impact of PowerNotes’s basic and AI-enabled tools on students’ reading, research, and/or writing activities and performance.

In the fall PowerNotes Pilot workshop, instructors spent time developing/refreshing their AI literacy, considering the critical connections between reading and writing, designing assignments that focus on deeper engagement with reading and making productive use of AI, and becoming proficient in the technical aspects of using PowerNotes and in how to integrate it into assignments.

Faculty pedagogy workshops

The JAHWC offers a variety of resources for instructors in every college and department at the University of Tennessee. Herbert Postdoctoral Fellows may help lead and develop writing pedagogy workshops for faculty members across disciplines, offering them exposure to new graduate assistant instructors and tenure-line faculty members hoping to improve some aspects of their approaches to teaching with writing in their courses. By helping with these efforts, HPFs have the opportunity to gain experience in Writing in the Disciplines (WID) programming through one-to-one faculty consultations, developing new web resources for faculty, and helping faculty members adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of writing education brought about by the spread of artificial intelligence writing technologies.

Student writing workshops

The JAHWC provides students information, resources, and opportunities for writing practice and success through a variety of workshops. For First-Year Composition students, “Write Here, Write Now: Building Your Academic Writing Skills” is a dynamic workshop series designed to help students enhance their academic writing abilities. The 4-part Spring series, for example, covers topics like effective time management, writing thesis statements, source integration, and primary source analysis, and each workshop provides practical strategies and techniques to improve essential academic writing skills.  Other workshops are offered in partnership with the Center for Career Development and Academic Exploration, the Office of Undergraduate Research, University Honors, the University Libraries, the Graduate School, and other units. 

Webpage development

The JAHWC’s main website is currently slated to be updated and redesigned, and Herbert Postdoctoral Fellows have the opportunity to participate in analysis of the current content and to provide feedback on the design and revision of information and resources.

Community engagement

Herbert Postdoctoral Fellows have the opportunity to work with the Flagship Writing Project, the JAHWC’s community-engaged writing program in partnership with local high schools. HPFs have helped the Flagship Writing Project through writing consultation with high schoolers working on college application essays, delivering writing-focused workshops on reflective writing, and collaborating with the Assistant Director of the JAHWC on other projects focused on building the capacity of the Flagship Writing Project. By helping with the Flagship Writing Project, HPFs have the opportunity to gain first-hand experience with the day-to-day administrative and curricular work of the JAHWC’s rapidly-growing community engagement programming.

Community-building events and activities

JAHWC writing consultants foster a supportive community that values meaningful connections. While on shift, writing consultants build relationships, collaborate on projects, and share ideas on best practices. We also organize a variety of off-the-clock social events, including trivia and game nights, crafting, and more. This relaxed and friendly environment encourages writing consultants to engage in open conversation and build friendships. These informal interactions form the foundation of our community. Such connections enhance writing consultants’ professional growth and contribute to the welcoming, supportive atmosphere of our center

Research

The PowerNotes project includes a research component, whose purpose is to explore how college students and instructors use PowerNotes, a digital annotation and research organization tool, and its AI-enabled features in academic reading and writing processes. The study will analyze secondary data generated during an ongoing internal evaluation of the PowerNotes software across multiple course sections.  The program evaluation aims to determine the effectiveness of PowerNotes software for implementation in writing-intensive courses.  The present research study seeks to leverage the existing data to understand better whether and how PowerNotes assists students in developing research and writing skills and fosters greater critical AI literacy. Specifically, this project will examine how instructors integrate PowerNotes into their reading and writing assignments, how students use PowerNotes’ basic and AI-enabled tools in their coursework, changes in student and instructor awareness, attitudes, and perceptions about generative AI in academic writing, and the overall effectiveness of PowerNotes in supporting reading, research, and writing.  The findings from this study may inform university policies on AI integration in academic settings and contribute to broader discussions on responsible AI use in education.

In addition, our ongoing IRB-approved study, “First-Year College Students; Reflections on AI and Academic Writing,” uses secondary reflective writing data from students in ENG 103 and 104 to answer the question “How do first-year students at UTK describe their experiences with and attitudes towards GenAI for academic use?” The study examines how students say they use GenAI tools when writing, what perceived benefits of GenAI use for writing students describe, what perceived challenges or concerns about GenAI use for writing students describe, and what feelings do students express about GenAI use for writing.

Herbert Postdoctoral Fellows have a 3/3 course assignment in the Department of English teaching first-year composition and, depending on curricular needs and instructor qualifications, 200-level professional/technical communication or other writing-focused courses. English Department courses are listed here. See especially 100- & 200-level courses, 102 Inquiry Topics, and Past Courses.

Herbert Postdoctoral Fellows spend about 4-5 hours per week working one-to-one with undergraduate and/or graduate student writers in the JAHWC. They may work in one or more of the following schedules: Undergraduate Writing Help, Graduate Writing Help, ESL Writing Help, or Application Materials Help.

Amanda Gaines is an Appalachian writer with a Ph.D. in creative writing from Oklahoma State University. Her nonfiction and poetry are published in Pleaides, Potomac Review, Barrelhouse, Fugue, december, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Willow Springs, Redivider, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, Juked, Rattle, Cleaver, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ninth Letter, among others. Her essays “Purplest’ and “Flea” were listed as notable in 2022 and 2024’s Best American Essays, respectively. Her creative work and scholarship consider gender, cultural mythos, and popular culture. She’s interested in contemporary horror and surrealism, how memory and notions of the self are fluid, hybrid creatures.

Emily Jalloul is a Lebanese-American poet from South Florida. She earned her PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Oxford American, What Things Cost: an anthology for the people, and Arkansas International, as well as others. 

Minadora Macheret is a poet and essayist who received her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas where she specialized in poetry with a secondary focus in Literature of the Shoah. Her poetry has been selected for the Academy of American Poet’s Prize, and she received the James Merrill Poetry Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. Her nonfiction was chosen for Orison’s Best Spiritual Literature of 2024 anthology. Her work has been published in Brevity, South Dakota Review, Salamander, and other journals. She is the author of the chapbook, Love Me, Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018).

Kyle Macy’s research interrogates intersections of conspiratorial narratives, cultic communities, and the legacy of romanticism throughout American culture. A Hoosier native from Indianapolis, Indiana, Kyle completed his BA in English at DePauw University before studying fiction writing at the University of Alabama’s MFA program, after which he received his PhD in Writing Studies from the University at Albany, SUNY. Kyle’s writing center experience goes all the way back to DePauw, where he began writing consulting as a sophomore undergraduate. As his teaching experience was broadened in Tuscaloosa and refined in Albany, so too was his writing consulting, and his academic interests expanded to include graduate certification in Rhetoric & Composition. Along the way, Kyle has been a guitar salesman, a bookseller, a freelance writer, and a lawn care professional. He is exceptional at spreading mulch. Kyle is at work on a novel.

Michael Pontacoloni holds a PhD from the University of Mississippi and an MFA From the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He previously taught at the University of Connecticut and the University of Hartford. His scholarly interests include popular culture and environmental humanities, and his poems appear widely.

Valerie Voight received her PhD from the University of Virginia. Her research interests include early modern literature and religious culture, digital rhetoric, and digital pedagogy. Her work has appeared in Comparative Drama and the Sidney Journal.